“Already darkening night
had quenched all rays of daylight, and made truce,
in mere oblivion of all care and fright,
with tears and with laments.”
Già la notte oscura
Avea tutti del giorno i raggj spenti;
E con l'oblío d'ogni nojosa cura
Ponea tregua alle lagrime, ai lamenti.
Canto III, stanza 71 (tr. Wickert)
Gerusalemme Liberata (1581)
Original
Già la notte oscura Avea tutti del giorno i raggj spenti; E con l'oblío d'ogni nojosa cura Ponea tregua alle lagrime, ai lamenti.
Gerusalemme Liberata (1581)
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Torquato Tasso 94
Italian poet 1544–1595Related quotes
The Never-Ending Wrong (1977)
Context: The trial of Jesus of Nazareth, the trial and rehabilitation of Joan of Arc, any one of the witchcraft trials in Salem during 1691, the Moscow trials of 1937 during which Stalin destroyed all of the founders of the 1924 Soviet Revolution, the Sacco-Vanzetti trial of 1920 through 1927 — there are many trials such as these in which the victim was already condemned to death before the trial took place, and it took place only to cover up the real meaning: the accused was to be put to death. These are trials in which the judge, the counsel, the jury, and the witnesses are the criminals, not the accused. For any believer in capital punishment, the fear of an honest mistake on the part of all concerned is cited as the main argument against the final terrible decision to carry out the death sentence. There is the frightful possibility in all such trials as these that the judgment has already been pronounced and the trial is just a mask for murder.
“No pale gradations quench his ray,
No twilight dews his wrath allay.”
Canto VI, stanza 21.
Rokeby (1813)
“But no clouds in a red sky promised daylight's return, nor in lessening shadows did a long twilight gleam with reflected sun. Black night that no ray can pierce comes ever denser from earth, veiling the heavens.”
Sed nec puniceo rediturum nubila caelo
promisere jubar, nec rarescentibus umbris
longa repercusso nituere crepuscula Phoebo:
densior a terris et nulli peruia flammae
subtexit nox atra polos.
Source: Thebaid, Book I, Line 342
“There are night stories that daylight doesn't know!”
Original: (pt) Existem histórias da noite que o dia desconhece!
The Mask and Mirror (1994), The Dark Night of The Soul
Context: Upon a darkened night the flame of love was burning in my breast
And by a lantern bright I fled my house while all in quiet rest.
Shrouded by the night and by the secret stair I quickly fled.
The veil concealed my eyes while all within lay quiet as the dead.
"John Hooper: Bishop and Martyr", p. 70
Light from Old Times (1890)
“Oedipus had already probed his impious eyes with guilty hand and sunk deep his shame condemned to everlasting night; he dragged out his life in a long-drawn death. He devotes himself to darkness, and in the lowest recess of his abode he keeps his home on which the rays of heaven never look; and yet the fierce daylight of his soul flits around him with unflagging wings and the Avengers of his crimes are in his heart.”
Impia jam merita scrutatus lumina dextra
merserat aeterna damnatum nocte pudorem
Oedipodes longaque animam sub morte trahebat.
illum indulgentem tenebris imaeque recessu
sedis inaspectos caelo radiisque penates
seruantem tamen adsiduis circumuolat alis
saeva dies animi, scelerumque in pectore Dirae.
Source: Thebaid, Book I, Line 46